Tag: Destiny 2

We’re taking a look Destiny 2 concept art, this time specifically that of the latest faction of enemies to show themselves in the solar system, the Red Legion. These guys were already being talked about before Destiny 2 had been released thanks to some MegaBloks sets which got leaked early, but we still no very little about them.

This guy is Gaul, leader of the Red Legion and the Cabal who kicks your Guardian off of his ship when he turns off the Light from the Traveller. Put simply, Gaul wants to take the Light of the Traveller for his own. This means removing it from the Guardians whom he deems unworthy of the power for their lack of will to use it to conquer. We’re not yet sure how Gaul is going to steal the Light, but we’ve seen him attach a device to the Traveller that ‘blocks’ it from Guardians, resulting in the opening story to unite the Vanguard once again.

This next concept art is for the Tower during the attack of the Red Legion as part of the Homecoming mission. I don’t need to point it out for anyone who’s played the beta but this is exactly what the mission looks like. Bungie has gone to extreme measures to make the game look incredible, and thanks to their efforts the story feels so much more real. In the background we can see the device Gaul is using to stop the Traveller’s Light, stealing it. What we don’t know about this machine is how Gaul plans on harnessing that Light for himself, because as far as we know the Traveller can only give its Light to others and not have it taken by force.

This piece of concept art shows off something we haven’t seen in-game yet, a Red Legion tank. If you’ve played Destiny 1 then you know what a Cabal tank can do and how hard it is to take down. Those things look like Dregs compared to this monstrosity, and the Red Legion is likely to have a number of them instead of just one if they’re attacking in full force.

If you look below the tank you can also see the pods that the Red Legion soldiers drop down to the battlefield in. These things are pretty terrifying when they’re dropping around you. They fall red hot after being dropped from a ship in orbit, and crash into the ground with a strike akin to what I imagine a meteor does. After this they sprout spikes and spin around until they eventually burn away revealing the troops inside, something that is equally unpleasant I must say.

When you consider that these two might be related it could be that this isn’t a tank and in fact some kind of drop ship that actually drops troops to the ground. It doesn’t look like the command ship you board in the Homecoming mission, but it might be an early concept of that ship, though I will always insist this is a tank.

We’ve collected some of the best Destiny 2 wallpaper from around the community so you can all enjoy it on your home computers or mobile devices. Check out each one for an explanation about what it is, where it’s from, and the location you can download it from.

This first piece of wallpaper is from an apparent promotion Virgin Media is running alongside their Fibre Optic broadband. While the promotion hasn’t been confirmed and may actually be a busted deal, there are a few screens you can see through the link under the image that are perfect for anyone’s wallpaper. This image is my personal favourite and I have to admit, staring at it does make me want to change providers just to get this sweet Sparrow.

This next piece of wallpaper is of the Sweepr Exo that currently occupies the Tower in Destiny 1, and still exists in Destiny 2. As you play through the first mission in Destiny 2, at least from the beta, you’ll be fighting through the carnage of the Tower you’ll find a small reprieve in the corridors covered by the last remaining Guardians. Within these corridors you’ll find the Exo hard at work, still trying to keep the Tower clean even when each missile hit brings a fresh coating of dust over everything.

This next bit of wallpaper is one of my favourites. Cayde-6 is a hero, a Guardian all Guardians can look up to, and even though he has to go off and brood for a bit in Destiny 2 he’s still going to be the best of the Vanguard. In Destiny 2 we see all of the Vanguard fighting in-game, and Cayde-6 has a really great moment where he fires off three Golden Gun shots into enemies before your very eyes, totally badass. If all this wasn’t good enough, he’s voiced by Nathan Fillion.

So how does The Farm begin? Well this wallpaper is pretty great at describing that without having to tell you anything with words. If I was going to use the word beautiful for any artwork and wallpaper it would be this, I mean just look at the Traveller and Earth meeting up there. While it could be that this is where the first travellers settle to start The Farm of Destiny 2, it’s also highly likely that this is the moment the Traveller was brought to Earth, I think you can make the decision for yourself and tell whoever asks you about it all the facts.

If you’ve got any wallpapers you think we should feature then leave us a comment and tell us what makes it your favourite Destiny 2 Wallpaper. If you’ve got similar taste to me I’d love to hear about it, and even if you hate what we’ve shown here it would be great to have some diversity in the wallpaper we feature.

With the console version of Destiny 2 out in under a month Activision Blizzard have been speaking out about the DLC and expansion situation with the Destiny series. We all know that Destiny had it’s issues when it comes to DLC. Nothing was out as soon as it should have been, and when DLC did finally hit the game it was never as good as we needed it to be.

With Destiny 2 the developers are turning over a new leaf. DLC and expansions have been carefully thought about and planned for the new title, because they’re now seen as being as important as the game itself. There have already been a lot of positive signs about Destiny 2, and Activision Blizzard have a tremendous amount of confidence in the game.

Destiny 2 has been made to appeal to a wider audience, both in the changes made between the original and sequel, as well as fact that the game is coming to one of the largest gaming sectors out there, the PC crowd. In order to maintain it’s appeal the game needs to do what all the most popular games are doing at the moment, provide constant support and updates.

Destiny 1 got updated every week, pretty much, and even though it wasn’t game changing or groundbreaking it was something you could feel as a player. The Crucible was changing almost constantly, and that’s a good thing because it keeps the competitive edge alive enough to make the multiplayer the most popular activity in the game, at least for some players.

PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS is updated every month, with new content in the form of gear and weapons dropping all the time. Occasionally the maps will be updated with new vehicles or altered areas to keep the game interesting for players. By comparison, Destiny 1 was simply being patched every week with a slight tweak in order to keep players from complaining about one gun or the other being the best according to stats.

Destiny 2 is going to be different. Not only are there two sizeable content drops planned for the game, one of which has something to do with Rasputin and the other with Trials of Osiris, there’s going to be far more support incoming.

We know that the live events team has been expanded and is already capable of working alongside the rest of the team in order to provide some great limited time events. Hopefully we’ll be seeing updates in Destiny 2 that are more akin to those seen in games such as Dying Light, with areas of planets being updated with new enemies and challenges every month or so.

The power of small free updates has changed games like Dying Light, keeping their fanbase alive in a game that doesn’t truly stand up to some of the releases we’ve had since. However, players keep coming back to it because it’s new, and it’s giving them a reason to explore a game they know inside out apart from this little new addition.

Bungie has finally revealed the point at which PC players looking forward to playing Destiny 2 will be able to get their hands on the beta, just as Xbox One and Playstation 4 players did recently, and really go to down ripping the hell out of the servers and general enemies occupying the game. However, Bungie recommends that you have a pretty beefy machine if you’re hoping to play the Destiny 2 beta, so steel yourself for what might be a large portion of your pay packet disappearing to the local computer shop.

First up let’s talk about the good news. PC players will be jumping into the Destiny 2 beta around the time of the weekly update, which occurs every Tuesday at 10AM BST. The PC beta will go live on August 28th for all those who have pre-ordered the game. Again I will stress that you take the time to check where your code is coming from, because it might be down to you to pick it up from the Bungie website or something. The beta will go live for the rest of you PC mortals on August 29th, ending on August 31st. The official launch date for the game on PC has also, apparently, been confirmed as October 24th.

Now let’s talk PC specifications. when it comes to processors Bungie say that you should have at least an Intel core i5-2400 or AMD Ryzen R5 1600X. For GPUs it’s recommended that you have an Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 390. Bungie also say you need at least 8GB or RAM.

If you’ve already got a bit of a beast of a PC then Bungie has some recommendations for upgrading that beast as well. If you’re upgrading then go for an Intel-Core i5-7400 CPU and an Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB GPU. However, if you fancy running Destiny 2 like Bungie does at all of their events, then you need an Nvidia GTX 1080Ti 11GB GPU and Intel i7-7700k processor.

Bungie has released a full list of recommended specs which are below, but they do stress that by the time the game launches these may well have changed. So as someone who doesn’t game on PC, I’m going to advise you to wait until the game comes out and then look at modifying your PC to play it. I say this because in my head Destiny 2 is going to set the bar for how great games can look for at least a little way into the future, so I would build a PC that plays it to the max in order to get the most out of all future PC titles.

In the Destiny 2 beta I got a chance to play the single strike that Bungie made available for us, The Inverted Spire. The strike itself was pretty great, but it felt totally different to any other Strike from Destiny, so I want to talk about how different strikes feel in Destiny 2.

In the original Destiny we had Strikes that took us from point A to point B, and then revealed a boss that needed an insane amount of bullets putting into it before it finally died and rewarded us with loot. After a couple of expansions the Strikes have changed, giving us more to do than simply move around and kill stuff, tasking us with taking down shields and shutting downs systems in order to access new areas. This key difference made Strikes more interesting and far easier to play one after the other if you needed to grind for some new gear.

The Inverted Spire feels like an incredible Strike, but that’s just because it’s so different. Firstly the Strike is so much more open than anything in Destiny. The map gives you a huge chunk of Nessus to run around and explore in, meaning players were even able to uncover areas believed to be Lost Sectors, and what might be a secret unlocked by completing a number of tasks in a certain order. The Strike also makes the acts of the Vex and Cabal feel much more real, with giant drills actively ripping the planet apart around you, and small caves opening up into huge city-like structures.

The boss of the new Strike also feels completely different to any other Strike boss before it. The boss arena changes twice, first to an area where the boss has elemental control over sections at a time, and then to a much smaller area around which there is damage causing Vex Milk. After a point the boss then starts to throw in new ads, and even charges you on the platform right at the end. This constantly changing battle makes the boss far more interesting, and basically an entire section of the Strike in its own right.

Finally, the Strike respawn rates are greatly increased. As I was running around it became apparent that if I didn’t revive my mates at the time then they’d take ages to respawn, and then take ages to reach me and the other person who were struggling up ahead with all the enemies. The Strikes in Destiny 2 feel like they’re making it easier if you stick together as a team, rather than go it alone.

Now that Coldheart has been revealed as pre-order bonus for Destiny 2, we need to talk about what it might tell us, and what it definitely tells us, about the game proper. the thing I must start with is that Coldheart is an exotic weapon that is a timed exclusive for those who pre-order the game. Depending on where you pre-ordered the game you might not actually get the weapon, so if you’re very bothered I recommend you go and check if you will be receiving it at launch or not now.

Coldheart said two very big things to me when I saw it for the first time. Initially I thought we had a new element type, but I’m not so certain about that so we’ll need to explore it deeper. Second, we now definitely know about an entirely new type of weapon that we’ll be blasting the crap out of each other with, the Trace Rifle.

A Trace rifle seems to be a type of weapon that shoots a continuous blast of energy at an enemy. From the clips we’ve seen it seems as though you’ll be battling with recoil as it fires in a similar way to how you do when you fire a Machine Gun. I think the key element of the name is Rifle, meaning it will be similar to a Scout, Sniper, Pulse, and Fusion Rifle which all have scopes and can be aimed over medium to long distances.

The advantage of firing what is effectively a laser beam over a long distance means you can deal loads of damage in a short burst. The disadvantage is that you give away your position massively, which you wouldn’t do with a Sniper Rifle or other Kinetic Rifle because the bullet passes mostly unnoticed. However, I feel like the trade off here is acceptable given that the damage you’ll be dealing is more than likely akin to the amount you deal when blasting someone full in the face with a Fusion Rifle, deadly.

What really gets me about Coldheart is its name. Cold indicates a new kind of element, but we know from the promotional material shown so far that this weapon uses Arc damage. If something has cold at its heart, it’s icy right? I think Bungie is hiding a spoiler in plain sight with this one. Yes okay the weapon will be using Arc damage when we receive it, but there’s nothing to say it can’t use multiple elements.

If you played the beta for Destiny 2 then you’ll know that the element of a weapon is set by an elemental damage modification for it. This means you can switch out any element into a weapon, which is a bonus considering each weapon now only comes with a single set of unique perks.

I’m saying that Bungie is holding back on the announcement of an ice element here. I mean we have three core elements, and there’s a Subclass for each, so why shouldn’t there be an entirely new element that also features in the new Subclass list? Subsequently meaning we have a new elemental weapon mod.

Destiny 2 is making a lot of big changes, and one of those changes is story. The original game had very little story, and what was there was incoherent and disjonted. It’s okay to admit it, we all love Destiny but it definitely had some weak points to it, but that’s all been worked on in Destiny 2.

The core of Destiny 2’s story is all about the lost Light from the Traveller, that much we know and we’re not going to get anymore until the game comes out unfortunately. What we do know is that Bungie is expanding the story through pieces of the game that weren’t important in the slightest in the first game. Public Events.

Well, when I say Public Events, I mean all of the missions and gameplay you get when patrolling a planet, because it’s been massively built upon to offer so much more than you’re thinking it does. One thing that Bungie has left out so far is that a portion of the game’s side missions and other story content is locked until you finish the main story of the game. Not only does this mean that there’s still fresh content once we finish everything the game has to offer at it’s core, it means we’re going to be busy for far longer than we were in Destiny.

Lost Sectors are a side activity we know about already. What they consist of is loot, guarded by a large enemy. But how you find these areas is far less clear than how you do most other things in Destiny 2. When you’re running around up and down the main paths on a planet you’ll come across the symbol for Lost Sectors. When you see this symbol, you’ll need to then spend a while looking for the entrance, which could be as innocent as a small gap near the floor, the likes of which we’ve only seen on the Dreadnought. Lost Sectors will tell the story of what lies hidden on each planet, something about the history of the area, and maybe even the antagonist races.

Adventures are another type of side mission, one which will tell a self contained story within the Destiny universe. The aim of these missions is to expand the lore of Destiny and to the point where you know stuff you never knew was important. I’m really excited about these because they’re going to tell stories that are important outside of the scope of the main story of the Traveller. These are the things I want to know about the Destiny universe, and I hope you want to know them too.

Finally, the weekly events such as the Nightfall are being improved upon with Flashpoints. Every week there will be a new Flshpoint, which is a planet’s Patrol mission. Here Guardians will need to complete a certain number of Public Events, or type of Event, depending on what the Flashpoint requires in order to earn great rewards. Cayde-6 will be selling special Treasure Maps that you can buy to find new loot and activities on the Flashpoint planet of the week. Not only all this, but certain Public Events on the Flashpoint each week have the potential to unlock a secret boss, but only if you complete them according to the restriction such as time, or beat them after activating the Heroic variant.

All this is how Destiny 2 is blending its world into the story way more than the original, and it’s something worth celebrating.

Over the weekend in the Destiny 2 Beta Bungie put The Farm live for an hour. The Farm is the new social space in Destiny 2, and the reason it was only live for an hour is because it’s missing pretty much everything that you’d interact with. However, there was still plenty to do and explore in the area, unfortunately it wasn’t possible to leave and explore the European Deadzone but that’s okay. Some players are still in The Farm at the time of writing because you don’t get kicked out, and you can remain there for as long as you’re logged in hilariously.

While it was live I took the opportunity to explore The Farm from top to bottom, accomplishing everything possible, including a small glitch. The first thing to note is how beautiful the European Deadzone is. Everywhere I went I could see some stunning backgrounds, including a lovely view of the mountains over a colossal lake. I know I mentioned in another article recently that Destiny 2 is definitely better looking than the original, but it really hits home when you’re not running around shooting and can take the time to enjoy the view.

If you remember the purple ball from The Tower then you can be happy, but sad first. The purple ball is dead, I’m sorry but it got destroyed along with The Tower. What we do have is a football pitch, or soccer pitch, with a massive football! I spent way too long running up and down the pitch, defending, goalkeeping, and scoring as much as I could with anyone who would play with me. What I find best about this is the fact that you don’t even need voice chat to make it work. If a Guardian saw me in the pitch they jumped in and started running with the ball immediately. There’s no need to sort out which side you’re on, just go for a goal!

The buildings in The Farm are dilapidated at best, with some simply being ruins. However, as I explored each one I found little nooks where it’s clear vendors will be appearing to give you items, missions, and generally lurk out of sight. I have no idea which vendor will go where, but it’s obvious from certain symbols if you take the time to notice them. Dead Orbit for example will be at the far side of The Farm where you first spawn in. The Crytarch has his own house, understandably, and there’s also an entire Eververse tent for anyone who wants to spend more money on Destiny 2.

Speaking of the Cryptarch, his house held the best glitch and easter egg in the Beta so far. If you ran at the front of his house, aiming for the curtain on the left, and slid at the right time, you’d end up inside the house. Of course you’re not meant to get here and all you can see is a blank room, some odd looking floor tiles, the edge of a fireplace that clips through the wall, and the remains of the piping coming in from outside only to end two inches or so through the wall into the empty room. I’d like to think that because players found this Bungie will add something in and really kit it out as a bit of a surprise for the main game, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Finally, probably the biggest part of exploration in The Farm was the rooftops. There’s a large main farm building which you can hop out of a window in and access the roof from. Up here there are wires connecting the building to another across the way, so of course we all attempted, and succeeded, to cross these wires to the other rooftop. I suspect the large radar ball on this second building has something to do with a Warmind, but I’m not certain. From this building again there is another set of wires connecting it to the Cryptarch’s roof, where you can jump onto the waterwheel and have a lovely time walking forwards but getting nowhere. I found a nice little shortcut to the Cryptarch’s roof by jumping onto pipes outside of the house, and using the new climbing ability to get onto the roof from the ground.

That’s all that there was in The Farm I’m afraid. It has been said that the area will grow as you play through the story and save more people around the European Deadzone, as well as the rest of the System. I would love to see The Farm expand beyond what I saw, there were tents and a ship beyond the borders allowed to us in the Beta that I could see, so the boundaries may extend a long way beyond what we were shown.

The Destiny 2 Beta offer Guardians the chance to pay the very first mission in the game, one of the early Strike missions, and experience two Crucible modes. The first mode is one we’re used to and the one that’s pegged as easy, Control. The second mode is much more hardcore and is brand new for Destiny 2, Countdown.

In a match of Countdown players are split into two teams of four, which is actually the case for all Crucible matches now anyway. Each round teams switch roles, with one team attempting to plant bombs to destroy the opposition’s bases, while the other makes every effort possible to stop the enemy from planting their bombs and disarm them if necessary.

While most Crucible matches are fast paced and over in the blink of an eye, Countdown is different. The score limit is six, but in order to win a team needs to be good at both attacking and defending, and that’s not easy.

When I was first playing the game mode I found that defending against a team planting bombs was easier than planting the bombs themselves. The levels are built to make it easy for the team attacking to hide and sneak around the defenders, while the defenders have two exposed points where they need to be focusing their attention, and sometimes that means they’re flanked easily.

As an attacker it can be equally hard to reach the points you need to plant the bombs on. Defenders have a lot of cover in and around the bomb points which makes it easy for them to take pot shots at anyone moving in and then move back into cover to heal up.

However, both round types became far easier as I played the map more and more. I can say with total confidence that the more you know your arena, the better you’ll play in this game mode. Even though I wasn’t communicating with other players, we were figuring out which way we were going to take on the points based on which routes we took to them. As defenders this was easy because you followed the one player who went in the opposite direction of the other two to defend that point. But as attackers, the clues are more subtle. For example, on the way to one particular point there are two small differences to the end of the route, one round a corner and one over a small obstacle. I would always move the opposite way to the other player heading down my route because it provided a flanking position against the enemy.

As you can imagine there are loads of little side routes to take, and each one will help you win the round if you learn the map well enough, which is a major part of what this new game mode is all about.

The Destiny 2 Beta went live for those who have pre-ordered the game on Playstation 4 this week, and I have been playing loads of it since the unlock time. I think there are a lot of things to discuss about the Beta, such as the weapons you get given, the different systems we can make educated guesses about based on what we can see, secrets, Subclasses, and mission. However, I think the most important think we need to talk about first is how different Destiny 2 feels to play when compared to the original.

The first thing that hits you is just how much better Destiny 2 looks over the original. This is an obvious difference and one that many people aren’t talking about because it’s taken for granted. However, there is a massive difference in the way the game looks, and that plays into pretty much every other change in the game.

Everything is faster. This is first noticeable when you take control of your Guardian. Moving everything from the weapon your using to physically running around in missions and the Crucible. The faster movement makes everything feel better, and it’s not that the original game was even particularly slow it’s just that the increased speed gives you that feeling of extra power and control that totally changes the game. Hunters especially are granted additional dodge abilities that were previously only available through Exotic gear. Finally, the game now also features ledge-grabbing, enabling you to finally reach all of those places that were just out of reach, or that you just misjudged the distance for your jump on.

The new weapon slots make far more sense than the old ones. Instead of Primary, Secondary, and Heavy weapons we now have Kinetic, Energy, and Power, and they make a lot more sense believe me. Now you can pack two Hand Cannons, one with elemental damage and one without, one with massive range and one with very little. The beauty of the Power weapon slot is that it still holds the heavy hitting guns such as your Rocket Launcher and your Machine Gun, but now it also holds your Sniper Rifle. It might sound like the game is limiting the use of certain weapons, but when you’re playing it really doesn’t feel that way, instead it feels like you’re playing with a wider range of weapons.

Ships can be destroyed. In the Strike, The Inverted Spire, you can destroy a ship as it flies low over the planet Nessus, which is totally different to the original Destiny! In the first game you could shoot at ships and bring down their weapons yes but you couldn’t destroy them at all.

A lot of players are saying that more changes have been made to cater to the PVP crowd, altering how the game plays to optimise Crucible matches. This isn’t the case, but the changes are way more prevalent in PVP because of how compact the Destiny 2 experience is in the Crucible. The smaller maps and intense combat enhance the changes and make everything feel much better, far better than in the original Destiny.